Wednesday arrives and I get up early for breakfast and arrive at the course in plenty of time to hit a few balls on the range and get in some putting. I met the other three players in our foursome – Scott Jolley, a physician from Ogden, UT, Barry Maxwell from Dallas and Brian Sleight from Seattle.
I’m in a tie for 15th place so I’m looking to play better. I’m also pleased that the course yardage is 140 yrds less than the day before. The Casablanca tees we were playing from were about 6,720. Still long but better than 6,860! The course itself was a step up from the Palms golf course from Tourney Day 1 and the greens were well maintained and smooth. Casablanca is layed out adjacent to the Virgin River which brings water to the valley that Mesquite sits in so the course was lush, however there were still desert areas aplenty.
My range session had gone great with all my shots being right on target. This was my ranger rick day though. Maybe it was nerves or just really desiring to play well, but from the first swing at Casablanca I was in a battle with pulling the ball. It cost me several strokes and I started with a bogey, dbl bogey, triple bogey on the first three holes. Not where I wanted to be!
We had started on the 10th hole and I pulled it together for a string of good holes following that to finish with an ok first nine. However, I ruined my chances of a good round early on the front nine with a quadruple bogey on the easiest hole on the course. It was a short par 4 with about a 190 yrd shot to clear a water hazard, the fairway was about another 30 yards beyond. I was tempted to hit 3 wood just to get over, but I decided on driver as I wanted to insure that I reached the short grass of the fairway instead of the rough just beyond the water hazard. A pull hook into the hazard was the result. My shot from the drop area was another pull into a greenside bunker. Then my sand troubles really took hold. I hit out of the bunker, over the green into another bunker on the opposite side. From that bunker I went over the green again and back into the original bunker. Finally on the green from there I two putt for a desert snowman! Facepalm!
At rounds end I had finished with a 90.
I headed back to the Casablanca hotel for a quick shower then drove over to the Eureka Hotel and Casino for a Texas Hold ‘em Tourney for participants of the Mesquite Am. Buy in was $65 and 80 golfers were participating. It was a great time. I started off strong with a straight on my second hand right from the flop. Another player followed me all in and I had doubled my chips! I played steady after that and was able to last into the top 20 players. Not quite good enough for the top 5 which got cash prizes ranging from $1,300 to $350. A fun event tough that I’ll make sure to participate in if I make it out for 2013.
At that evenings dinner standings were revealed for round 2. I dropped one place in the overall standings and was now 16th out of 30 golfers.
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